Nostos, a video game where players roam a vast “open world”, was launched in December 2019 as a vindication of the cutting-edge technology developed by one of Britain’s brightest prospects: Improbable Worlds.
Improbable, co-founded by 32-year-old Herman Narula, the son of a billionaire construction magnate, hailed the game as a showcase of what developers could do with its software. But 15 months after launch, Nostos has been cancelled.
Nostos is the latest in a string of scrapped games built with Improbable’s SpatialOS software, raising questions about a technology that won a $500m investment from SoftBank in 2017, then the biggest ever investment into a UK start-up.